Lara Marlowe of the Irish Times had a terrific lead, “We could know within two weeks whether Professor Didier Raoult, the French virologist who heads the Mediterranean infectious and tropical disease institute in Marseille, will go down in history as the man who saved the world from COVID-19, or will be dismissed as an arrogant, misguided scientist who raised false hopes.”
Doctor Raoult was the one who took hydroxycloroquine off the shelf, mixed it with azithromycin (another available drug) and used it to treat 24 French COVID-19 patients.
It worked. 18 of them tested negative after 6 days.
Marlowe wrote, “President Donald Trump apparently learned of Raoult’s experiment through a Twitter post by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. On March 20th, Trump wrongly claimed in a White House press briefing that the US Food and Drug Administration had approved what he called “the very powerful” drug chloroquine to treat Covid-19.
“Trump was corrected by Dr Anthony Fauci, a top expert on infectious disease and a pillar of the fight against corona virus. But Trump persisted, tweeting the following day that ‘HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.’
The United States began testing this in New York, which is the nation’s leader in COVID-19 patients.
He is a known figure in a relatively unknown medical community. The American Society for Microbiology interviewed him in 2018.
It said, “Dr. Didier Raoult considers himself a ‘microbe fisher,’ always ‘fishing’ to discover new microbes. He says that in order to fish successfully, you need to first create the correct fishing pole (tools), and then fish in places where no one else is fishing.
“Dr. Raoult is the Director of the Mediterranean Infection Foundation at the Aix-Marseille University, France, and he has “caught” a number of unique microbes over the course of his career, including giant viruses.
“He’s also ‘caught’” a number of bacteria responsible for various diseases, including the causative agent of Whipple’s disease, and he even has two bacteria named after him.
“Dr. Raoult talks about what is special about giant viruses, how he found the bacterium that causes Whipple’s disease, the challenges of trying to get uncultured bacteria like Rickettsia to grow in the lab, and how he would be sailing if he weren’t a microbiologist.”
He may have caught the big one, Elizabeth.
Be cautious, but hopeful.
April 8, 2020 – As China’s Wuhan Ends Its Long Quarantine, Residents Feel A Mix Of Joy And Fear
Watching what happens there could give us important insight into the situation here. It could provide a clue regarding the actual significance of asymptomatic carriers.
@Greg: Anything out of China and WHO should be discarded completely forth with. They lied and no longer can be given our trust.
@George Wells: “Proof” is recovery, and not just a few. It has been widely used and unless someone has some “proof” it has harmed recovery, then it should continue to be used, not wait for some lab experiment. That is going on as we speak. The anecdotal evidence is recoveries. That’s the most important part and the only part I care about.
@Greg: The doctors believe it works. Patients are leaving hospitals because it has been used. While you are waiting for “proof”, lives are being saved by hydrochloroquine. “Proof” is sort of immaterial at this point.
@Deplorable Me:
I agree 100% with every last word in this part you wrote.
The only thing you got wrong (and it’s only “wrong” in strict scientific parlance) is:
In medical science,” recovery, and not just a few” is encouraging anecdotal evidence, but JUST that.
The dictionary defines an “anecdote” as essentially a recounted story, but science stretches that definition to include as many of such stories may be told but which none-the-less were not confirmed by processes of conventional experimental design and legitimate peer review. Those two things are what are being sought By Dr. Fauci et.al., but which are not yet obtained. Again, that doesn’t mean that the drugs should not be used when indicated. It simply means that “PROOF” is still some weeks away.
@George Wells: We want it proven, we want the testing, there is not time for some people to wait especially in NY where the auctioned off ventilaors bought by then GOP Mayor Bloomberg years ago because they couldnt afford to maintain them as they slashed their medical budget. ( good case against government run healthcare) https://www.propublica.org/article/how-new-york-city-emergency-ventilator-stockpile-ended-up-on-the-auction-block.
But other priorities expand when you cant even keep clean what you have.
@kitt:
I know what it is like to flounder within a top-heavy organization that devotes too much of its budget to maintaining its bureaucratic hierarchy in the manner it has grown accustomed to and not enough on its peons or the equipment they use.
I won’t be drawn into pointing fingers or assigning blame, as it happens all the time in the military, the government, and in business, a consequence of rank having its privileges. I worked most of my wage-earning years in science and was a disciple of pure science. I was disappointed to discover that even in a science setting, where scientists DID science day in and day out, ugly politics and ugly human nature were never so far removed that they did not influence everything that was done.
Yes, I was a disciple of science, but the almighty dollar was GOD. And as time is money, so corners were inevitably cut. I would be deeply surprised if hospitals in New York were run any differently than chemical companies in Virginia, and so I am not surprised by the problems you call attention to.